


Oliver Queen, You Have Failed This Earth

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 00:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: Oliver's experience with Tommy makes him believe he is the one who has failed.





	Oliver Queen, You Have Failed This Earth

He’s used to telling the bad guys that “you have failed this city.” Now, as he sees how things are different on Earth-2 to his own timeline, Oliver Queen wonders if he should be applying that to himself.

Logically, he knows he shouldn’t feel any guilt; and that if the Oliver Queen from this universe had been standing here today returned to his family, he shouldn’t feel any guilt either for anything that had happened in his absence. Yet as Oliver watches his mother talk about the Thea Queen who grew up here having overdosed on her eighteenth birthday, removes the hood of the Dark Archer only to discover Tommy Merlyn’s face underneath, Oliver feels like he is the one who failed them both.

In some ways, seeing this Tommy Merlyn was harder than the day he was confronted with Tommy Merlyn from Earth-X, the man who had displayed the façade of regretting his actions, having been forced into the Reich only to reveal that he had been playing Oliver all along. In the Tommy Merlyn he had unmasked on Earth-2, Oliver could see a part of him that may never have really wanted to pull on the Dark Archer’s mask, could still see the other Tommy that would have been there to greet him had Thea been saved, knew in the moment that he was getting through to Tommy and talking him down.

As Oliver looks at all these people surrounding him on Earth-2, it reminds him of all the people he hadn’t been able to save; the Moira Queen of his universe, who had sacrificed herself in order to save Oliver and Thea from Slade Wilson. Wilson had said that day that it was a shame Oliver lacked Moira’s courage, and to this day, a part of him has been unable to disagree. And he thinks of the Tommy Merlyn from his own universe, the Tommy who he had been unable to save from Malcolm’s Undertaking; if they had been on better terms before that night, if Oliver had been there earlier to save Laurel himself, would Tommy still be alive today? Laurel Lance, Quentin…could he have done anything more to save them too?

When he managed to talk Earth-2’s Tommy down, Oliver really thought he had made some headway in saving him, as he had failed with the Earth-X version. While he could never fix everything that had happened, on either Earth-2 or Earth-1, saving Tommy here went some way towards making things right. So he and Diggle would go home, give the Monitor what he needed, and in some way he’d feel like he’d done something for this Tommy that would go some way towards making things right with his old friend.

Except now, every night when he goes to sleep Oliver is haunted by the visions of those he knew on Earth-2, sees his mother being pulled into the antimatter wave, knows that he had been unable to save her and his attempts to fix things for Tommy hadn’t made a difference. A whole earth, gone, and Oliver had been unable to fix it.

Oliver Queen, he says to himself, you have failed this earth.


End file.
